President Trump, really
Curtain up
Words fail me, so I’m looking to the words of others.
In the New York Review of Books, Michael Tomasky writes, “All these weeks later, and still the words ‘President-elect Trump’ have not lost their power to shock. Soon enough, those of us who can bear it will watch as he speaks the words ‘I, Donald John Trump…’ Far from becoming easier to process, what seemed incomprehensible the night of November 8 has only become more so.”
To me, it’s an ongoing nightmarish episode of ‘The Twilight Zone — “a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man, the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition” — from which I’m unable to escape. I look for ways out: maybe Trump won’t make it to January 20th; maybe some new explosive revelation — he is indeed a Manchurian candidate dangling on a string pulled by a hostile power — stops him at the gates. I don’t know what else.
Might the Constitution’s vaunted “checks and balances,” serve as a counterweight to a man who continues to demonstrate his intellectual, moral and psychological unfitness for the highest office in the land? Or, conversely, might Trump be a counterweight to the extremists controlling the second branch of government — “that will, during the next four years, try to undo as much of the New Deal as it can,” in Tomasky’s words.
He adds:
“The possibility that we will be counting on Trump to be the voice of reason on some questions only reinforces the strange qualities of the situation at hand.”
Yep.
My contribution to the #Notmypresident movement so far has been to tweet like crazy some of the strange and scary qualities as they come to light, and the unimaginable comes ever closer. The screen grab at the top of the page is there thanks to Meryl Streep reminding me of just how despicable the man is. It’s an image that will live in infamy.
Now what? In addition to tweeting, I’m planning to use this Medium publication primarily to curate, hopefully with some added value, news items that catch my eye as they relate to the situation before us.
Quick example. The Wall Street Journal has a front page story today headlined ‘Data on Key Voters Led Tycoon to Trump’. The tycoon in question is Robert Mercer, a billionaire “computer programmer and hedge-fund manager who distrusted the political establishment and loathed Bill and Hillary Clinton,” and donated $23.7 million to Donald Trump’s campaign, much of it in the candidate’s darkest days. His daughter, Rebekah, is on the 16-member executive committee of Trump’s transition team. Here’s the graf that particularly caught my eye:
Once Mr. Trump takes office, Ms. Mercer is likely to help lead an outside group, funded by her father, aimed at bolstering Mr. Trump’s agenda, Ms. [Kellyanne] Conway [Trump’s campaign manager] says. Republican operatives expect the organization will build its messages based in part on information collected by Cambridge Analytica, a data firm backed by the Mercers that worked on Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Cambridge Analytica has been widely credited for spotting voter trends favoring Trump, in both early voting and late in the campaign, which other pollsters had not. With respect to Robert Mercer, an investor in the London-based data firm (and in Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News), readers of Jane Meyer’s seminal Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right, might recall him as one of the “major investors” in the Koch brothers’ network of political initiatives. Meanwhile Rebekah Mercer, a Stanford grad, “sits at the nexus of Trump’s universe,” according to Politico, having taking over the reins of the Mercer family foundation and distanced it from the Koch brothers and the brothers’ fondness of free trade and immigration.
If Meyer’s book and Politico’s piece are any guide, “bolstering Mr. Trump’s agenda,” will likely be very well financed, scorched-earth, and permanent.
